1,000 signatures reached
To: Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan
Cleaner air for all Londoners!
As Mayor of London you have promised to tackle London’s deadly and illegal levels of air pollution.
Please expand the ULEZ to protect all Londoners. London doesn’t stop at the North and South circulars and neither should clean air.
Why is this important?
Over 9,000 early deaths are caused by air pollution in London every year. There are areas in London that exceeded annual pollution limits just eight days into 2016. These pollution hotspots are on our high streets, by our children’s schools and where we work.
We’re finding out more and more about how damaging air pollution is - not to just people with asthma, like myself, or other respiratory or even heart conditions, but to children whose lungs are smaller, whose growth is stunted, because of the dirty air they breathe.
That’s why, despite living in Zone 3, I was shocked to discover that both of my children’s schools are in air pollution hotspots, where legal limits are regularly broken. Sadly, this is not unusual, as many primary schools are on roads with heavy traffic and this is the biggest source of air pollution in our city. Even more shockingly, under current plans by the UK Government, London won’t meet legal limits of air pollution until at least 2025 – 15 years after the original deadline.
At the moment the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) will mean only the cleanest vehicles can enter central London from 2020. This is still, however, not enough to clean up all of London’s air even by 2025. That’s why Sadiq is looking at whether the ULEZ should be expanded to the North and South circulars. Yet, there are pollution hotspots outside of this area. So, the ULEZ needs to be expanded to cover the whole of Greater London to protect all Londoners.
The UK Government has been taken to court for failing to protect us from air pollution and the previous Mayor did very little to clean up our air.
While I welcome the considerable efforts that the new Mayor has taken, I encourage him to be bolder, braver and faster with action to address this crisis.
